[Marianne]

Hi Mars,

I read your responses a while back ago. Then my computer was acting up and soooooooo slow, and then finally crashed. So finally I am getting back to you. I agree with what you said that something can be different for different people. That no two people will see things exactly alike. It is within the polytheistic nature of the myths that any one thing such as the idea of “god” can be seen/interpreted/regarded in a myriad of ways. I too believe then that there can be more than one truth and and that any one thing can be two or more things at once–without there having to be a right or wrong or correct or incorrect. I like this quote of Jung, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are” [emboldened emphasis mine].

But now, I would like to share with you and with anyone else here the experience of synchronicity that befell me not too long after you wrote the following–along with your response about the mummy and the bird:

Times now are muddy. How to wade to the shore from phatomless pristine depths? Follow the currents to where they bring the next promise afloat or ashore? Lifted by roaring thundergods into its heaven temporarily, to smashed to the ground again next hailstorm? Al born innocent, all faithfull, all on internet, all temptations, all true yet only personal trues. All diminishing horizons. “I’m hungry now. Feed me!” But there is no fast food for the mind. Gut their body with saturating holy sugars until filled, but it does not feed. Funny cat movies are cute, but there is only one. Hollow people. Hollow world.

I had an out-of-town appointment. Just as I was almost home, I switched to the most local radio station and heard that a storm was on its way with 70 mph winds. I pulled in my driveway and decided to bring my plants on my patio indoors; just as I was bringing them through the door,extremely large raindrops, but few and far between, began to fall. Soon as I and the plant were in and I shut the door, the wind came through like a tornado. Huge tree limbs fell all over my yard and my garden. The electricity went out. Some houses in the area caught fire–lightning or maybe fallen wires. The roof blew off one of the buildings downtown and one its walls tumbled down in the wind. When it was over, all the neighbors were out and we were all cleaning up all the yards. As I lifted several tree limbs to drag them into a pile, I saw dead birds all over the place, all over my yard. A baby bird landed with broken wings under my bench in front of my porch. Its eyes were not open yet. I tried to help it, save it, but could not. It had bones sticking out of its wings at its shoulders, and all I could do was try to make it as comfortable as possible. I called a local wildlife rehabilitation centers, its animal rescue service. Their phone lines were down and by the time they got back to me the next morning, the baby bird died. I talked to it, and it moved its head each time I did in my direction. So, the mummy and the bird, the bird and the mummy. There is more to this story–much more–I hope to share another time. Thus is, at times (it seems), “the symbolic life.” It seems there is often more to it than what we read into it., that sometimes the marvelous happens –such marvels. It was not long after I saw the dead birds and then the injured baby bird that I thought of the words you said and the previous posts about mummies and trying to save a bird. I believe these events are the things myths are made of, seeing the story within events, seeing the connections in a way that events are not just a bunch of empty facts of  any happenstance, but imbued with meaning–whether personal meaning and personal myth or cultural meaning in cultural myths.

I have to add that the dead birds were smashed–smashed under branches, smashed on my concrete stone patio. Some were absolutely flattened.